Development blog

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(Not happy with this image as ball is dull, and its during falling section which makes little sense in a single image)

I’m now at the stage where I’m doing the boring (but I love it) stuff which is localisation. I have done a little research and it seems silly not to support other languages so I am. One of the few perks of a masters course is meeting clever people from all over the world; then coaxing them into helping me localise Forgotten Ball’s in game text. There isn’t much of it, so no biggy really and most are glad to help, but I don’t know any Russians.

So, Russian? Please help

Also, should I support any other languages? I can probably fit 3 more into the space, so Dutch? Swedish? Norwegian? Portugese? Indian? I dunno outside of the other languages.

Moving blocks are back to the (very) old off-orange.

Now is also a good time to write that Forgotten Ball is almost complete. Which is surreal, and kind of scary. All of the big tasks have been ticked off, and that means the game is playable from start to end. Everything is there. User Interface was completed yesterday and localisation code went in this morning. AI was wrote months ago, and I fixed that up last week. UI was the last major pain, and I’ve got it down.

UI has not been easy, I made a decision to support desktop/mobile in a single design and that was kind of tricky to implement. I mean, it has been tough. I’m happier with it now, but yeah it was a few days of hell. I plan to have a narrated video of current UI on mobile soon, which I will try and post next week. I suspect the UI won’t be to everyones taste, but it’s not too far out. Full controller/keyboard support in navigation was a little nightmare and multiple display resolutions was what broke my first (beautiful) design.

Balls look at eachother.

One of the last things I’m working on is giving the ball some personality (random squeaks, jumps/movement) as there is life in there, I’ve just got to show it.

I’m hiring a teen (in a ballsy, somewhat crazy move) to test Forgotten Ball for a few days over a couple of months. This is the last of my pennies, so yeah boo. I plan to trial him for a day, if good, hire again.

I’m a proficient tester, but oh my, its hard testing a game you’ve built. You just don’t see stuff.

Always worth sharing a little gameplay segment, as this area is late game and quite tricky. New code pushing player out of world, and yeah I am happy with what is happening. Testing it with people has been good too.